How To Use Airplay Mirroring From iPhone/iPad To Apple TV, Mac or Windows PC

Airplay Mirroring is a fantastic feature of iOS present on the iPhone and iPad. It lets you mirror your iOS screen’s device, and basically everything that you do on it, to an Apple TV or a Mac computer. This turns out to be a incredibly useful feature while doing presentations and demos, creating screencasts or videos, or if you just want to showcase your iPad/iPhone photos on a bigger screen.

And the best past: Airplay Mirroring is incredibly easy to use as long as you have the right setup and software. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s needed and how to use Airplay Mirroring on the iPhone and iPad.

Requirements

1. An iPhone 4S/ iPad 2 or newer, running iOS 5 or any later version of iOS.

2. If you want to mirror to Apple TV: a 2nd gen or 3rd gen Apple TV running software version 5 or later.

3.If you want to mirror to a Mac: OS X Mountain Lion (or later) , a supported Mac, and an app to support mirroring. The list of supported Macs is:

iMac (Mid 2011 or newer)

Mac mini (Mid 2011 or newer)

MacBook Air (Mid 2011 or newer)

MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)

Two main apps that allow you to mirror your iPhone/iPad screen to a Mac are Reflector and Air Server . Both of these apps offer free trials, are available for $14.99 for a single user license, and have other licensing packages for multiple users. Both these apps also work on Windows PCs. I tried Reflector for iOS 6 and Air Server for iOS 7, and both seem to be really good.

4. A WiFi network. All devices taking part in the AirPlay Mirroring must be on the same local WiFi network.

Installing Your App

Installing these apps is very easy. Once you purchase (or try) these apps, a file will automatically download onto your PC/Mac. On Macs, the installation is very easy. All you have to do is drag the app into your Mac’s Applications folder, and you’re done. Once you open the app, it will ask you whether you want to try or buy the app. If you choose to try the app, Reflector has a limitation. It will automatically shut down after 10 minutes and will then need to be restarted. Also, after I had used Reflector 2 times, the app started telling me that my trial had expired. Try Air Server, that’s better.

On Windows, installing Reflector is nearly identical, with the only difference being you will need to allow Firewall access for the app.

How To Turn On AirPlay Mirroring On iOS 5 & 6

1. Open up the Multitasking Bar on your iOS device. This can be done by double-tapping the Home button. If you are on a iPad, you can open the multitasking bar by using a swipe up gesture from the bottom bezel, provided you have enabled multitasking gestures in Settings.

2. Now that you can see the multitasking bar, swipe on the recently used apps list from the left to the right. This will need to be done once on an iPad and twice on a iPhone. Swipe until you see the Airplay Mirroring icon.

3. Tap on the Airplay Mirroring icon. This will bring up a popover dialog showing you various devices that are available to mirror to on your WiFi network. Note that you will need to have Reflector or Air Server open on your PC/Mac for the it to be available to mirror to.

4. Tap to select either the Apple TV or the Mac and tap to toggle the Mirroring button below the device name to On.

5. To turn mirroring off, bring up the Multitasking bar again. Swipe left to right to reveal the AirPlay Mirroring icon (just as you did above), tap on the AirPlay Mirroring icon, and tap on the entry for the iPhone/iPad.

How To Turn Airplay Mirroring On in iOS 7

1. Open up the Control Centre on your iOS 7 device. This can be done by swiping up from the bottom of the screen on the iPhone as well as the iPad.

2. In the middle of the screen, you should now see a Airplay button. Click on it.

3. Select the device you would like to mirror your iOS device’s screen to.

That’s it. This really is a superb feature that’s so easy to use.

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